


As Frost in Sunlight

by lucidSeraph



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:11:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidSeraph/pseuds/lucidSeraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing lasts. Even so, he has no regrets.</p><p>A fic exploring what happened to certain members of Jack's family after he became an Immortal. Spoilers for Rise of the Guardians (If you've seen the movie, you probably know who I'm talking about -- the one whose memory calls out to him)</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Frost in Sunlight

"Jack! No!"

All her anger vanished as she watched him plunge beneath the ice. She scrambled forward, but halted when one hand came down on the cold surface and spiderweb cracks spread from it.

"Jack! JACK!"

She sat for a few more moments, seconds that seemed like eons. Her breaths came out in white clouds, faded on the air. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. _He'll come up out of the water_ , she thought. He'd come up smiling that stupid smile of his, shaking the water out of his hair like he did in the summer when he held his breath and stayed down too long, scaring her. Like that time when he pretended that a shark had gotten him (sharks don't live in ponds, silly). Like every other time...

"Jack! This isn't funny!" she said. Her cheeks are hot and her throat grew tight. Her tears freeze in the open air. "Jack, please!"

He didn't surface.

She couldn't run on the ice. She slipped, slid, crawled to the shore, crawled on hands and knees, too slow. She had to make it home. For Jack, she had to make it home.

*********

Her mother wrapped her in the warmest blanket they had. Her teeth chattered and she shook, and her tears wouldn't stop. The men of the village all grabbed what tools they could carry and ran into the woods.

"It's my fault," she sobbed. "I wanted to go skating today, I begged him!"

Their father had said that no matter how cold it was now, it probably wasn't cold enough for the ice to be quite thick enough for skating. But Jack had smiled and shrugged. "It's probably thick enough near the shore," he'd said. "As long as we stay near the shore, I'm sure it'll be fine."

But she'd been so excited and she'd slid out a little too far, and then she'd blamed him, she'd said it was a trick. She thought he was playing tricks, like the time he'd tricked her into that mud puddle while they were out in the springtime woods. 

"It's my fault," she said. Her mother stroked her hair and whispered that of course it wasn't, and that her daddy would surely bring Jack back.

*********

It was dark when her father returned. Their house was so small that she slept on a small pallet in the common room, where it was warm and close to the fire. She had pulled the blankets over her head and pretended to be asleep, peeking out of a hole in the blanket.

Her father's look said it all.

"Ice is too thin, water's too cold," he said, putting her brother's skates on the rough hewn oak table. He sat with a heavy sigh, and slowly put his face in his hands... and then he cried. "We couldn't even get his body back, damn it all, we couldn't..."

Her mother put her arms around her father and they both cried and her heart burned because no, parents don't cry, and then, no, it couldn't be. He was Jack. Jack loved the snow and a little bit of cold water wouldn't have hurt him he had to be alive, he just came up after she left, he had to be... 

"He's not dead!" she shouted, finally, throwing back the covers. Her parents looked up in shock. "He can't be, he was just joking! He has to be alive!"

"No, you can't--" her father said, but she had already run out the door, not caring about shoes (Jack never cared about shoes) and into the night. She tripped when she got to the town square, falling flat in the snow, choking on tears, and that's when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him in the distance.

She sprang to her feet, turned... but he was gone. But no, wait, again, out of the corner of her eye, she could see him trying to talk to Angie Wilkins, the shepherd's wife, but when she turned to look right at him he was gone again. But there, again... no?

She stood very still, and then, just then, she could see... but why was his hair so white? Why was he so very pale, like...

Like a ghost?

No. It had to be a trick of the light, or one of his pranks, she turned to run towards him, but then he was gone again.

"Jack!" She called out at the edge of the town. " _Jack!_ "

For an instant, in the moonlight, she thought she saw him turn, white and ghostly, puzzled, as though he wasn't sure who could be calling him, but then her father's arms were around her and she kicked and screamed and cried. 

"No, no, you can't, he's gone, sweetie, I don't want it to be so but he's gone!" he said, and he was still crying and damn it all fathers don't cry, they don't, and she couldn't, she couldn't.

"I saw him! I saw him, he's pale and frozen we have to take him home!" she cried, but it was no use.

*********

There was no joy in their house.

She still believed, she held it in her heart, but when she said it everyone just shook their heads sadly. "Poor girl, she's lost her head," they all said, "But such is the way of children." The pastor from the tiny chapel said that perhaps it was her brother's departed spirit saying goodbye, but no, she couldn't believe that, he had to be alive. He had to.

Dinners were silent, and even the other children of the town seemed down. Jack had been the funniest, he'd been the one with games, with schemes. 

"We have to go out into the woods," she said one night, around a fire as some of the boys half-heartedly played knucklebones in the dirt. "I know he's there. I believe in him. I don't know why he hasn't come home." 

Bobby, the miller's son, sighed deeply. "Because he's dead, okay? I know it hurts, but you have to let the dead be dead, and stuff. Jack'd hate it if you kept on like this."

" _He's not dead!_ " she said, stamping her foot. "He's not dead, I'll prove it to you."

*********

He'd been traveling, all walkabout. It was so strange. He was sure he'd been born that night of water and frost and snow, but then he knew some things, and found himself totally ignorant of others. He'd known quite a lot about that little part of the United States, and he found the city of Boston quite familiar, but in a strangely distant way. He'd thought it was much, much bigger, for one. He wasn't sure how he knew or thought he knew those things, but there it was.

He hadn't known anything about Japan, though; had known nothing of mountain hot springs and temples in the snow, and found it peculiar that the three snowflakes he'd brought to an aspiring poet of eleven years warranted such a smile of delight, and such an elegant poem in response. He'd found that winter came to Australia in July, but that he could only bring snow to the highest mountain peaks. He'd found that in the far wastes of Siberia winter almost never left, but it was so common that there was little joy there.

But still no one saw him.

Once, in England, he threw snowballs at every single child he could find, and all he did was start a snowball fight. They had fun, to be sure, but none of them ever saw him, not a single one. He didn't understand it. And so he'd gone back to that first town, telling himself that he'd look for answers. That was surely the reason, not because the place felt familiar; and if it did, well, he was of the frost and cold of the lake there. That was all.

He brought the snow with him, a slow, drifting fall, gentle like a blanket for once, not his usual frost and fury. He wanted something quiet, and he sat in the branches of a tree, looking up, when he heard --

"Jack!"

He started. Jack? And the voice sounded so familiar... But who..?

He floated to the ground on a passing breeze, landing lightly, and flitted over the snow. Perhaps he was simply hearing things, mistaking some other name for--

"Jack! Jack, where are you?"

Jack! Again! His name, right there, someone was calling his name, he knew it had to be! Something tugged at his heart. Maybe she could see him! She knew him! He slid down snowbanks, searching for that voice, and then, there, in the clearing, a little girl, and something tugged at him, he didn't know why, but maybe it was just that finally she could see him.

"Hey, you were looking for me?" he asked, grinning. "I brought you this snow day, you know, you having a good time?"

But she didn't look like she was having a good time. He walked over. "Hey, now, buck up, it's a great day for building a snowman, or going sledding, if you..."

She paused, for just a moment, her eyes going wide, a smile breaking across her face. "Jack! Jack, I knew you were..."

But then she turned, and the moment she did her face fell. 

"What? What's wrong? I'm right here, can't you..."

She walked right through him. 

"Jack, please," she said, more quietly now, her voice filled with tears. "You can't be dead, please come home..."

Oh. Not him. Some _other_ boy named Jack. Of _course_. It was never him, was it? He turned to leave, but then she fell to her knees, curling up in the snow, her tears freezing on her face.

"Jack, I believe in you, you can't be dead..."

He couldn't leave. He had to turn, had to kneel by her side and put his hand on her shoulder, or rather just hover it right above, pretending he could be there for this poor lost girl. "Your brother must have died, or run away, huh," he said, sitting down. "Well, you can't see me, but I'm here, I guess." 

She must have been exhausted by the day's search, as she fell asleep in the snow. "Oh come on, kiddo, that's no good, you'll freeze to death," he said. "Come on." He blew a cold breath of frost on her nose, and she blinked, and for half a second her eyes widened, and she said, "Jack!?"

But then she looked straight through him again. 

"Wrong Jack, sorry," he said, his smile a touch rueful. "Go on, go home."

She couldn't hear him, but something seemed to tell her that she needed to stop for the day, and she pulled her arms around her and headed back towards the village. He walked by her side, just long enough to make sure she got home safe and sound.

*********

She saw his ghost less and less, as time went on, but she still saw it every so often. He looked so cold and pale, in the corners of her eyes, but she still believed. He always came when the snow fell, and she remembered that he loved it so. She wished she could put a blanket around him, keep him safe and warm.

But then in spring, she stopped seeing his ghost at all. 

It was the day after Easter when they finally found his body, or what was left of it, when an unlucky fisherman had dragged a piece out, just a piece, and then had the strength of stomach and will to actually try to get the rest. She wasn't allowed to see it. Too gruesome, they all said. But she heard their whisperings, about how the trout had gotten to him already, about how cold and pale he'd been, about the swelling, and it made her sick to think. Worse, though, worse, was that they'd all been right. 

She insisted that they carve a snowflake into his headstone, even when everyone said that seemed morbid, but no, she said, he loved the winter so, it had to be a snowflake. Had to be. And then, while everyone stood around in black and crying as the simple pine casket was lowered down, she put his ice skates on top. It seemed right. They disappeared beneath the dirt and dust.

*********

Years later, she had her arm in the arm of a handsome boy, a traveler who had come with his family to their small but now growing town, and they took a walk through the woods, dressed in their Sunday finest even though there was no one to see it. He was warm, and he had been good to her, and as they walked it began to snow, soft and quiet, and at once she started to cry, but her smile hadn't left her face.

"What's wrong?" he asked, frowning, offering her his kerchief. She dabbed at her eyes.

"My brother died, after a day like this," she said. "We'd gone to go ice skating, and he fell through the ice..."

"Oh, darling..." he said, pulling her close. She let him, but she shook her head even so. 

"No, it's alright," she said, still smiling. "He saved my life. He saved me from drowning. And when I was a little girl, I thought I saw his ghost, every time it snowed..."

She pushed away, just a little, to look up at the trees, at the slow flakes spiraling down in circles. "Sometimes, I think he's still here, in these woods, his ghost, watching over us, and our town. And even if he isn't, he's in a better place, and he died a hero."

She pulled him closer, leaning her head on his shoulder. "And I know he wouldn't want me to be sad."

*********

She came up with the idea after she had her first child. Why _not_ a story? Something to go with the winter dark.

"Every time it snows," she told her daughter as they sat by the fire. "That's Jack... Jack _Frost_. He brings the snow for children to love, and he loves to play... but watch out, because he's also a prankster!"

The little girl gasped. "But what kinds of pranks, mama!"

"Oh, mostly harmless ones. But his favorite is to nip at your nose, just like this!"

She reached out and tweaked the girl's nose, putting her thumb between her first two fingers. "Oh no! I've got your nose now!" 

The girl giggled, reaching out, trying to grab the nose back.

"But Jack, he's so clever and fast, he puts it right back, just like this," she said, tapping her daughter's nose again. "So all you feel is a little nip of chill, from the winter. That's Jack."

But Jack never stayed in her daughter's mind, not like Saint Nicholas did, or the Easter Rabbit.

She, though, she never forgot. Even if in her mind he wasn't a bringer of snow, but a brown-haired boy with an easy smile and perhaps a habit of doing too many pranks, she never forgot. And when she was old, she found it strange that that phrase, _Jack Frost nipping at your nose_ , so many people seemed to know it, but she'd only ever told her daughter. Yet no one really believed that stuff, of course, not that he was a person. It was just a turn of phrase.

But sometimes, on the coldest winter nights, she'd look out of the window of what was now a much bigger and respectable house (owned by her husband, who was from a wealthy family) and saw him out of the corner of her eye, barely there, skating across the ice.

*********

"I'm sorry I didn't remember you before," he says. It's late spring, and that always makes him uncomfortable; the snow just doesn't stick, and he ends up with gray rain, which isn't fun for anyone.

Her grave has snowflakes carved in the stone, just like his -- and he found that strange too, finding that, walking over his own grave. Good thing he couldn't feel chilled anymore. 

He thinks he should feel sad, but three hundred years is an awfully long time. Instead, he kneels by the headstone with a smile.

"Even if I didn't remember, I'm glad I made sure you got home safe that one night," he says. "And you grew up to be so beautiful! I mean, wow. I don't just say that 'cause you're my sister. And the way you looked at him... that glow in your eyes, oh man."

"I think the only thing I wish was different was that you hadn't been so sad for so long. I wish I'd known, I really do. But you had a happy life. That's all I could ask for, right?"

"I don't regret a thing."

He blows into his hands and there he grows a single flower made of ice, the petals more like snowflakes than any real flower, and leaves coils of frost across the stone. He lays it there across her grave, and knows in his heart that somewhere, she's smiling on.

The flower and frost won't last. But then, so little does.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it wasn't clear: Jack's sister could only see him out of the corner of her eyes, because she believed in Jack her brother being alive, not in Jack Frost the Immortal. Jack didn't remember his life, thus in some way, she was only believing in half of him.
> 
> She couldn't quite see him as an adult because it was, in the end, just a story she was telling her daughter to make herself feel better, not something she entirely believed.


End file.
